


wanna wake up where you are

by theseourbodies



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Emotionally Significant Makeouts, Fade to Black, Getting Together, M/M, WELL i still haven't entirely, i bet y'all were thinkin' i would never really commit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21507748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: For once, for the first time, the reasons don't come to haunt him.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 18
Kudos: 140





	wanna wake up where you are

**Author's Note:**

> **I love a good procedural, and H5O was a favorite show of mine for a very long time. But support for this fictional show is not endorsement of the institution is romanticizes. If you enjoyed this fic, or any of my other H5O works, please consider supporting bail funds and other support networks for victims of police brutality and racism. Remember their names.**

They come through a whole series of cross roads together, and at each one is a choice. The choices don’t change, and so their paths don’t, either.

There's a ring in Steve's pocket that he fully intends to lose to a beautiful woman he loves. He lets the girl go despite that, and tucks the ring back into its box and away again. 

There's a baby, a baby boy who looks so much like Danny it's a tragedy. He loves the boy with all his heart, but he lets Rachel go again, anyway. 

There are all these reasons not to, good reasons like good women and honest careers and kids, and for a while those reasons seem more important than all the moments when things might change: 

_Danny, sleep-rough, exhausted, looks up at Steve in his own clean, white kitchen and calls him baby instead of babe._

_Steve, travel-worn, buzzing with adrenaline, wraps a hand too tight in Danny's rumpled shirt, pulls him close, wraps him up-- but he presses his mouth to Danny's hair instead of to dirty, sweating skin._

A hundred thousand moments pass with them making the same decisions until they're closer to retirement than they are to the start of their careers. Until they're here: 

Danny, asleep in a hammock with a paperback resting on his face, with his slacks rolled up to the knee and his shirt unbuttoned to the waist. 

Steve, watching him from the back porch of his family home with fresh bottles of the beer Danny likes sweating in his grip. He's staring down another moment of that ever-growing number of moments, another moment where he has to weigh a certain decision against everything important in his life. 

For once, for the first time, the reasons don't come to haunt him. He brings the bottles over to his partner, settles them in the grass and lifts the book of Danny's face. He wants to say, Danny tell me all the reasons why not. Tell me, I can't remember, but all that comes out is his partner's name, whispered like a secret, like Steve's scared of being heard, even though he's not. 

Well, he thinks, as Danny's eyes blink open. Well, maybe just a little scared. Just because he can't think of any of his usual reasons why and why not doesn't mean that they're not there. He's a complex animal, he understands the concept of permanence, even though he wishes that he didn't. Even though he wishes that this one perfect moment was all that was left in the world. 

He kisses Danny anyway. He presses his mouth to his partner's, steadying the gentle sway of the hammock underneath them. Tomorrow doesn't matter, the next hours and minutes don't matter. He doesn't have to think about it-- he and Danny have already grown older than Steve ever expected to live. He's outlived his father; he's outlived so many of his friends. He and Danny have become this old together-- what's tomorrow or the moment after this in comparison. 

Danny blows out a breath and pulls away. "Jesus Christ," he mutters, but he doesn't push Steve away. "Jesus Christ don't kiss me like that after all these years. Kiss me like you mean it, McGarrett." 

And Steve does; he does until Danny curses into his mouth and rolls right off the hammock and onto the soft grass underneath, rolls right off the hammock and right on to Steve. Steve lands on his back with an oof! and laughs and laughs, shivers even in the warm sun and lets Danny take over for the rest. They're right out in the open, hidden by a screen of bushes and trees, but Steve doesn't care. He doesn't care about the reasons why not any more, not with Danny's body curled over his like the bowl of the sky over an island or the world, all over Steve and everything about him that's ever been hurt. 

Danny kisses the breath out of him and gives it back again, curls his rough, big hands over Steve's shoulders and down his arms; he laces his fingers with Steve's, brings their hands up to press into the soft grass up by Steve's ears, and it's an anchor and a promise. When Danny breaks away for a moment to gasp in the small space between their mouths, Steve turns his head and kisses their hands where they're woven together in the-- his own promise, his own anchor. 

"Yeah," Danny chokes out, and he looks wrecked when Steve looks at him out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah, ok. You ready to do this, finally? I warn you I'm a one-man kind of guy, seems like." 

Steve laughs and relaxes back. Danny's nerves have always made Steve calm as a counter balance, a necessary weight. 

"Well I hate to tell you but you might have some competition. This guy I work with, he's really something. A hot piece, I think the kids say." 

Danny groans, but he can't hide his grin in Steve's shoulder fast enough for Steve to miss it. "Not sure he's much of a hot anything anymore," he mutters, breath so close to Steve's ear that it makes Steve shiver again and _want_. Danny pulls away from him and Steve almost pulls him back to the ground, more startled than anything by the thought that Danny could really just get up and leave him there if Danny really wanted to. They get stuck in an awkward equilibrium with Steve's hand wrapped bruising tight around Danny's bicep, his other hand still linked with Danny's closer to the ground, and Danny half on his feet and bent double by Steve's weight. Danny blinks wide blown-black eyes at him, and that's a lot to take in-- hair falling into his face, stubble glinting on his jaw, Danny looks down at him with shocked-soft eyes and a quietly gasping mouth and Steve has to kiss him again, he has to, so he curls up and does it. He doesn't say don't go or please because the fear really was unfounded. There's no way Danny would have shown him that face if he had meant to walk away after all. 

Danny always has something to say even if it's not words at all. He hums against Steve's mouth, wraps his free hand behind Steve's neck to stroke at the shaved-short hair there; he tilts his head a little and gets deeper when Steve gasps at the feeling, licking inside to steal the sound from Steve's mouth and all the air in his lungs, too. It's a terrible position, but Steve doesn't think about the burn in his belly until Danny's not there to distract him from it. Danny pulls himself away and he drags Steve's bottom lip with him, gently, with his teeth until Steve whines straight up from the feel, the little intimate hurt. Danny lets him go to pant in Steve's face and grin and say actual words that Steve can't focus on at first. 

"Not doing this out here in front of God and all your neighbors, babe," Danny tells him, and when he leans back further Steve lets himself be pulled along after until they're both on their feet, still with the fingers of their hands interlaced. "Take me inside like a gentleman, McGarrett, I know you got it in you." 

Inside. There's a couch inside, and a bed, but-- Couch, Steve thinks with certainty just as Danny starts tugging him along by the hand saying, "Bed, you Neanderthal," all firm, and Steve almost physically trips on the thought of it. Danny warm and stripped bare in Steve's bed in the middle of the afternoon and all that bright warm sunlight, safe in the place that had been Steve's shelter since he could barely walk. 

Blood and sweat and tears and family; that's what makes up the home that Steve could give to Danny now, Danny and Grace and little Charlie who was growing in to his daddy's bright hair and brighter eyes. Steve doesn't trip this time, he just stops just inside the door from the porch to the study, gasping at the weight that hits him right in the chest. Danny's stopped by Steve stopping and he turns back immediately, something already closing down in him. Steve remembers that moment, minutes or hours ago, when Danny had pulled back from him and Steve had thought that he was leaving; he shows Danny everything he's feeling as he reels Danny back to him until they‘re both standing just inside this house that Danny and Chin and Kono had helped him rebuild, again and again. Not his father's house anymore, not his mother's. Steve's home, now, where his sister could always come back to, where his beautiful little niece would always be warmed and cared for and loved. He and Mary would never be sent away from this place again, and neither would Danny; not ever again. 

Steve doesn't realize he's probably crying until Danny, face and body wide open for him again, reaches up to run a gentle thumb just under Steve's eye. He curls his hand back through Steve's hair until he can press into the tender place below the curve of Steve's skull and pull Steve down to him to kiss him. It's a serious closed-mouth kiss, a church-and-steeple, til-death-do-us-part kind of deal and Steve feels it warm him better than the radiant heat of the sun he can feel at his back still. 

"Take me to bed, Steve," Danny says when he pulls back, and that's serious, too. All the things they say to one another all the time, but never out loud, echo between them, and then Steve takes the lead. There's still a low, warm heat in him, curling up in his belly and making his hands shake, but the urgency's gone from him. Danny wouldn't have shown him that face if he intended to leave; Danny wouldn't have kissed him like he had just now unless he meant it, too. Danny doesn't do things without a reason. He doesn't do things like this unless he means them. Steve holds Danny's hand tight, and does as he's told. 

**Author's Note:**

> happy nanowrimo pals, this is for palace and also for me <3


End file.
